


That's where you'll find me

by SugarcoatedBrain



Series: A Marvellous Christmas [2]
Category: American (US) Actor RPF, Captain America (Movies), Chris Evans - Fandom, MCU, Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Real Person Fiction, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Actors, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, F/M, New York City, Theater - Freeform, reader - Freeform, theater fan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-05-18 12:39:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19334704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SugarcoatedBrain/pseuds/SugarcoatedBrain
Summary: "I really need to stop scaring you and making you jump like that.."Elizabeth has always sat in front of the theater to read. This is her special place, her own little bubble of peace. And she certainly won't change her habits because an A-lister has got a job there.





	1. Act I, Scene 1

The weather was quite chilly on that Saturday morning, the wind was creeping between the skyscrapers and buildings, howling like a sad wolf and refreshing the whole city. It was nice to be able to sit down in this city and sometimes, Elizabeth felt like maybe, she could do it more, but with her job and all, she already spent all of her free time there, on the small steps in front of the New York City Center, her nose stuck in a book and her face hidden behind her brown hair. Sometimes, a pair of glasses would keep it from coming in her sight, sometimes, she’d tie it in a ponytail, a braid or a messy bun, just so she could keep reading in peace. In all the years she had spent in this giant city, there was no place like the small steps in front of the New York City Center, where the colors on the wall would dance like flames and where the columns would provide fantastic backrests for when she’d be so into a book she’d forget the rest.

Elizabeth had moved to the Big Apple ten years before, when she had picked NYU as the best option for college. She had fallen in love with the city years ago, when her dad took her to a show on Broadway. At that time, life was easy and she remembered the feeling of getting into the train for the two-hours-long journey to New York. Living in Middletown wasn’t a pain, she actually liked the small city but she was meant for bigger things and she knew it. So as soon as she could, she took the train for the big city and spent the day there with her dad, first, then on her own when she turned 17 and it was time to move into a dorm. For as long as she knew, taking the train felt like the first step into a big adventure. It was thrilling, she always had jitters and couldn’t stop dancing on her feet like the ground would swallow her whole if she stopped. Her dad found it endearing, really, her mom never really understood her excitement whenever New York was mentioned. So most often than else, it was just her and her dad, taking the train to the big city. Their first trip was back when she was six, when she was big enough to go to a show in Broadway and he had brought her to a representation of Cats that clearly started her obsession with Broadway musicals. Since then, her dad had taken her to Wicked, to Beauty and the Beast, to The Lion King, Hairspray, Cats again (and again, and again, it was her favorite as it was her first ever), The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables, that she insisted to go see when she was fifteen, after she had read the whole book by Victor Hugo. She had fallen in love with Marius and couldn’t wait to see him live his love story with Cosette, though she imagined herself as Eponine, more than anything. She just felt like the ignored lover was a bit more like she would be, if she ever lived in the fictious world of Victor Hugo’s figment of imagination. Her dad pretended to be Jean Valjean the whole evening and Elizabeth fell in love even more with Marius that night. Les Misérables became one of her favorite book ever and she would read it every time she had nothing else on her to be read list.

When she moved to her crappy dorm room at NYU, she brought her copy with her. Her roommate didn’t get the obsession she had with that damn book, who would even _want_ to read that massive thing for fun? And even worse, _enjoy it_?! But Elizabeth didn’t care. She had Marius, she had Cosette, she had the streets of Paris and all of this magical thing that was reading. So she often took her copy to different places in the city, to read in peace, until she realized there was no better place than the small steps in front of the theater. There, she was let alone all day long and she would be able to read without any complaint. The bosses inside couldn’t throw her out, she was already outside, and she was sheltered from the rain. It happened sometimes: she would run all the way across the streets to get to her little safe haven, only to get drenched in the pouring rain and when she’d finally see the familiar set of columns in the distance, she’d sigh with relief, slow down her pace and finally crash down on the dry pavement underneath the concrete ceiling that would usually shelter the audience members from the rain while waiting to enter the theater. The space wasn’t private, it was a piece of street that belonged to everyone and while the security staff often tried to get her to leave, Elizabeth loved that spot more than any other to read in peace.

That day, the weather was quite nice. Elizabeth had just finished her day working at a book shop, earlier than planned. Her boss, a sweet old lady who’d owned the shop for decades, had nicely allowed her to leave early, as their customers were getting rarer and rarer with the months. Sometimes, a group of young girls would enter the shop and leave with a handful of books each. These girls would always help to soothe Elizabeth’s and her boss’ minds, as people seemed to enjoy reading out of e-readers rather than real books, nowadays. The young seller knew that it was what modern society was about: numeric files to enjoy them without waiting, to take them everywhere, to sync them between their phones and tablets and readers, but she was a bit of an old school lover and wouldn’t trade the scent of ink on paper for anything else. There was something magic about picking up a book that she knew she wouldn’t find if she were to read on a screen. The sound of the pages turning was a serious delight for her ears, adorned with multiples piercings sprinkled in her cartilage, making them shine with the light. Her eyes, rimmed with thin framed glasses, were always making a back and forth movement from left to right, as she’d read faster and faster everytime. Of course, she had her favourites: Les Misérables, Wuthering Heights, Jane Austen but she also liked to read young adults novels that would remind her of the teenage years she never had. See, Elizabeth wasn’t a very popular girl back in the days. She enjoyed the company of older people who had things to tell and not just about how they kissed John K., the most handsome guy in high school. Cheerleaders, jocks, those were the two casts you had to be in to be popular, back in Middletown. There was no room for intellect, for book nerds, for geeks. So she had a couple of friends, who were enough to spend days with, but never to go out with. They all kept in touch during colleges but Elizabeth enjoyed the company of her boss way more than the one of those girls that she had in common with only her high school years. They never really agreed on movies (Kassandra was a blockbuster fan, enjoying the pleasure of a movie that you wouldn’t have to think about over and over again to understand and Lucy was into old movies, the ones in black and white, the ones with romances that you wouldn’t see anymore. Elizabeth? Elizabeth loved books and only books.), weren’t much of coffee fans so they wouldn’t hang out at Starbucks, weren’t much of sporty girls so they wouldn’t train together and their only outings on rare Saturdays evenings would be bowling and In’N’Out Burgers. They just didn’t really click but they bonded over their loneliness and enjoyed each other’s company more than their solitude. Elizabeth, while leaving the book shop, remembered to pass by their neighbour’s shop, the one that sell old movies on tapes and grabbed one that Lucy would like for her birthday. Lucy was now a young mom in Michigan, so Elizabeth would have to make a nice package with the tape in it and a couple of NYC trinkets that her young Lily would enjoy as well as her husband, James. Lucy was easy to please: an old movie, a couple of snacks, a nice tea blend and a couple of NYC themed objects and she would text back saying that she was over the moon about those. Kassandra was always a bit more difficult but her birthday wouldn’t be for another three months so Elizabeth had time to think about it.

As she walked to her usual reading spot, she could feel herself go warm and fuzzy. There was something special about this place and she loved it so much.. but also, she couldn’t wait to go back to her book, for she loved fairytales and happily ever after’s. That one book in particular was so sweet, it made her remember how badly she had wanted that young romance back in high school. She thought it’d be incredibly sweet to have a boyfriend at school, a boy who’d walk the whole building through just to be at her classroom’s door when her hour of English lit would be over, someone who’d drive to her place just to give her a lift instead of letting her take the bus, someone who’d take her hand and walk her down the halls to the cafeteria.. Someone who’d like her, just because she was good enough for him and not because she was cute enough and he couldn’t score a cheerleader.

When Elizabeth finally crashed on the ground in front of the New York City Center, she felt her heart did a little somersault in her chest. She couldn’t wait to dive her nose in the pages of the sweet chick-lit novel she was deep into already. She had barely checked if the ground was clean enough but she just couldn’t wait anymore. She had waited all day for this moment, ever since she woke up that morning really, so she didn’t have an ounce of patience left in her body. Her bag on her lap, as always, she grabbed her book and let it rest on top of her bag. She swiftly browsed through the pages for her bookmark (she’d never corn her book, what kind of psychopath would give dog ears to a book’s pages? You’d have to be heartless, really) and when she found it, she sighed a little and went directly back to the story of Peter and Lara Jean. In this book, Lara Jean, a teenager, wrote five love letters to her past crushes and they mysteriously get sent. She has to deal with her sister’s ex-boyfriend who got a letter himself, and to confuse him, she fakes a relationship with another of her letters’ recipients. Elizabeth was a sucker for this type of novels, easy to read, full of sweet love and terribly cute. She had finished the first book of the series and was deep into the second one. Whenever she’d read, she wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else: the never-ending soundtrack of New York couldn’t distract her enough from the words sprayed in front of her. She wouldn’t hear the sound of construction or the yells of taxi cabs’ drivers. She wouldn’t hear the constant honking, the noise of cars driven down the streets, the buzzing noise of people walking fast to grab a train back to Queens or Bronx, the loud conversations of business men on the phone with their briefcases in hand, the laughs of little kids excited to go to Central Park to play soccer or to run in the grass, the barks of dogs, the yells of waiters to their chefs back in the kitchens and the constant hum of the city. All she could hear was her imagination go nuts while she’d read the words on the pages in front of her.

When she had her nose in her book, nothing could get her out of it. Nothing could and not even the tall, blond man who just got out of the black van in front of her. She didn’t see him check her from up there, she didn’t see him get his sunglasses off of his gorgeous blue eyes, she didn’t see the small smirk on the corner of his mouth and she certainly didn’t notice him enter the theater for the first time ever. He was new to the center, it was his first ever visit after he just signed his contract and he couldn’t wait to discover the atmosphere of the center, the high ceiling, the chandelier, the plush seats and the stage. He couldn’t wait to see where he’d perform for the next four months. He couldn’t wait to go back on a stage. He, neither, had a single bit of patience left in his body. He had been waiting for this moment ever since he had woken up and now that it was time, all he wanted to do was to push the heavy door and discover his new workplace. He had a photoshoot planned in barely an hour and a half so he only had little time to visit the center bottom to top before he’d had to pose for hundreds of pictures that would never come out at the exception of a couple, deemed more worthy by the promoters of the show. He wasn’t really used to being on a stage, he was more used to being in front of a couple of cameras, on very detailed sets (or humongous green screens) so it was a nice change. Apart from a (brief, to his tastes) experience at the beginning of the year, he wasn’t really much of a theater guy but he loved the trial and decided he wanted more of it. So he had signed for a series of four months and decided that he would do it wholly. He would enjoy every second of it, every detail of it, every show of his course.

The fact that he already was a famous figure, more even an unusual famous figure for a theater production, made the news even more phenomenal. His fans were going nuts over it, the media wouldn’t stop blogging, tweeting, speaking about it and it made of his buzz an even noisier background. So when he saw the brunette sitting on the ground in front of the theater, he immediately thought that she was here for him. It wasn’t that he had a big ego, it wasn’t that he expected fans or journalists to wait for him on every one of his moves but he was getting used to being stalked and he had made peace with it. If he had to sign an autograph before he could finally enter the theater, then so be it. Anything for a fan of his. But as he walked slowly towards her, he noticed that his shadow didn’t bother her at all. She was entranced in her book, too focused on the pages to be aware of his presence. Selfishly, he decided to enter the theater without a word to the woman. He had been waiting for this day for so long, the woman could always come back to see him if really she wanted to. He’d be here until mid-December, anyway.

 

For a whole week, Elizabeth had found herself unable to go back to the New York City Center. She left the small bookshops at ungodly hours and was so exhausted that she would come back to her small flat as fast as possible to crash on her bed. She had to wait for the Sunday to finally go back in front of the theater. When she arrived, though, she realized that it was crowded and frowned when she saw that journalists were pressing themselves in front of the Center to talk to someone. She knew that a new piece was supposed to open in a few weeks, as always. The shows would last for four or six months and go away, leaving the Center bare for a new crew and new sets. Was it possible that this new show was special? Maybe a special stage writer? Maybe it was the comeback of an old piece? Elizabeth sighed, coming to the realization that she wouldn’t be able to read peacefully for a couple of hours so she put her book back in her white tote bag and crossed the street again, crashing in the nearest Starbucks Coffee to buy herself a cup of tea. She found herself loved in a loveseat and took her book out of her bag, a little bit heartbroken that the atmosphere wasn’t the one she wanted to bathe herself in. From her little corner in the coffee shop, she could see the buzzing crowd in front of the City Center and the flashes of their cameras. Every ten minutes or so, her nose would rise back from between the pages and she’d see that it was still a mess outside. When finally, forty minutes after her arrival, she noticed that the journalists were gone, she rose from her seat, left her white cup with a lipstick stain on the counter and crossed the street for the third time of the day, to finally crash on the steps as she had originally planned.

She maybe was forty or fifty pages further in her book when she understood why the journalists were all there. Coming out of the theater, a blonde tall guy that she knew from all of these movies Kassandra had talked to her about. Back then, she had the ultimate crush on the guy, she couldn’t stop talking about him and honestly, at some point, Elizabeth started loathing the poor dude, before she realised that there was nothing he could do about it and he wasn’t responsible of Kassandra’s behaviour. That time, she wasn’t absorbed by her book that much that she couldn’t see him passing by. But instead of reacting, she just watched him walk by, obviously busy, his hands in his pockets and his satchel on his shoulder. The whole thing lasted barely five seconds, but to her, it felt like several minutes. It was like, suddenly, in the middle of all this noise and agitation that made New York what it was, the little corner of the New York City Center that she used to call her shelter had dived underneath water and everything felt cottony, slow and muffled. There was only one thing that she could focus on and it was that man, walking towards his car, opening the door and letting his driver know that he was ready to go back home. Later that day, when she went back to her place, she realised that she’d remember the first time she saw him. She’d remember his grey knitted sweater, his brown-rimmed sunglasses, the way his dark jeans fitted his thighs and even possibly the shape of his ass. She’d also remember the beard that crowned his cheeks and the way his hair was pushed back on his head. He looked insanely good and yet, seemed like he had barely taken the time to choose his clothes that morning. She told herself that he had a whole team to make him look perfect while she was on her own, with her small cupboards that she could barely fill with clothes. She lived on thrift stores and hand-me-downs from her mom, while he probably had paid his knitted sweater something like a hundred bucks. She wasn’t from the same world as he, but still, for a second back then, she felt like she shared something with him. Like her shelter suddenly wasn’t only hers anymore.

Two weeks later and Elizabeth was still camping outside the Center whenever she could. Not that she suddenly had another idea than to read there, but she couldn’t deny the small electricity waves that flustered her more than she thought they would. It felt like the theater was no longer her own little safe place but like she was intruding and trespassing a little. It was hers first, dammit! Why did she feel that way? Why did she feel like suddenly, it wasn’t her place to read there anymore? The fact that photographers were still hiding in the coffee shop accross the street made it even more frustrating. Who did they think they were, entering her little sanctuary and making her feel out of place?

It happened on the fifth day of feeling like crap, like she didn’t have the right to come read there anymore. Her nose was deep down into the pages, as always, when the door banged against the wall on the side and out he came, like a projection, like an image straight out of a glossy-paged magazine. He looked incredibly good but Elizabeth didn’t know yet that it was just the usual. She was about to finish the paragraph she was engrossed in when the loud bang of the door made her jump and scream a little, making _him_ jump a little as well.

“Oh my God, sorry, I didn’t mean to make so much noise”, he blushed.

“It’s okay”, she exhaled, her free hand on her chest to calm her heart down.

“Have a nice day”, he smiled.

“Thanks, you too!”

And that was it. The guy walked straight to the car that was waiting for him and he climbed in it. He didn’t turn around to watch her read, he didn’t say goodbye, he didn’t do anything other than get in the car and be driven away. Or so she thought, because she definitely didn’t see him turn in the backseat to observe her and frown at his behaviour. Was he supposed to ask her if she was a fan? Was he supposed to pose for a picture with her? Why was she here? What were she hoping for when she planted her butt on the ground, in front of the theater? Elizabeth didn’t hear him mutter a few words that even his driver didn’t understand and she didn’t see him close his eyes when he realised he must have been a jerk to her.

It took a few days again for Elizabeth to have another encounter. She had a different book, she wasn’t really sure she was actually liking it but since she couldn’t put it away for dear God’s love, she kept reading it and cringing at some parts. She was about to finish a page when something came into her view. And she didn’t mean just something in the far distance that distracted her. She meant something came directly between her face and her book, big enough to block her view of the pages and to make her jump again. When the slight scare feeling slighty came down, she realised it was a dog’s head and she was suddenly caught in a crazy laughing fit.

“Hi you”, she giggled, rubbing the dog’s head. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

The dog barked lightly, like it was afraid of scaring her again but he opened his big mouth and took a large lick at her left cheek, making her laugh even louder. As she scratched his face, her fingers met the rough material of his collar and she calmed herself down enough to take a look at the dog tag around his neck.

“Hi Dodger, you’re a really cute boy”, she smiled, letting him bark a little bit louder. “So, where’s your human, little pal?”

The white, brown and black dog barked a little again, his tail wagging behind him like crazy, his excited body crashing on her book when she patted his back. Soon enough, Dodger’s human came full speed into view and she couldn’t quite believe that it was the same actor as the two previous times. He was out of breath, Dodger’s leash in his hand, finally getting his dog into view and relaxing a little. Putting his hand on his knees to catch his breath, he took a second to be able to talk properly.

“Hi”, he panted. “I’m very sorry about that, my dog got out of his leash and I couldn’t run fast enough.”

“It’s okay”, Elizabeth laughed, getting up and picking her book from the ground to save it from Dodger’s dirty paws. “He’s been sweet, don’t worry.”

“I’m having trouble believing you”, he scoffed. “This dude is a complete nut-job”, he laughed, finally getting Dodger back to clip the leash back into the special hook of his collar.

“I saw his name was Dodger, we bounded a little”, she smiled.

“That’s nice, you made a friend, Dodger!” he laughed, squatting to be at the same height than his dog. “Nice to meet you, I’m Chris”, he introduced himself.

“Nice to meet you Chris, I’m Elizabeth”, she smiled.

“I really have to stop scaring you like that, I was so far and still I saw you jumping when he barged into your view.”

“It’s no big deal, this book was getting cringey anyway”, she grimaced.

“Well, I’m needed in the theater but it was nice talking with you”, he smiled.

“Have a nice day, then. Bye Dodger!” she scooted to scratch the dog’s head one last time.

Chris laughed a little and went straight into the theater, mentally cursing himself for not engaging with Elizabeth a bit more. If she really was a fan, she must have felt like he was the biggest douche around. If not.. Well what the hell was she doing there?


	2. Act I, Scene 2

When Elizabeth came back home that day, in her crappy little appartment, she saw the red flashing line of her answering machine. She still had a landline, to a majority of her friends’ despair. Letting her handbag crash next to the small table where the machine was, she pushed the flashing button and let the voice of her old friend Kassandra filled the appartment. She was asking for news about her, asking if she was okay, if she had sent her gift to Lucy yet because she hadn’t and she had approximatively zero idea so if Elizabeth could call her back and maybe, just maybe, peep her a glimpse of idea, she’d appreciate it really much. Elizabeth shook her head, bemused but still picked up the phone from the base and looked into the contacts on it to find her friend’s phone number. As she let the phone dial it down, she went to her bathroom and started a bath, dropping a quarter of a Lush bath bomb in it. Bath bombs were not cheap in that shop but she loved the glitters that came with them so she took the habit of cutting them in four. It made the money worth it. As the water filled the bathtub slowly, her friend’s voice exploded in her ear, as usual. Kassandra had always been loud, chirpy, very excentric while Elizabeth was a bit more introverted. Not that she was a complete hermit but she didn’t mind being alone and she certainly didn’t mind talking at a normal sound level.

“So how have you been doing in that big city of yours?” Kassandra asked, finally.

“Well, I met a guy you know, actually!”

“A co-worker? A friend? Tell me everything, who was it?”

“It’s actually a man you haven’t met yet but let’s say you share a few common interests, especially movie-wise”, she smiled, as she put the phone on speaker and got rid of her clothes.

“You met an actor?! No fucking way!!”

“Ahem, yes way”, Elizabeth smiled.

“Which one was it? Tell me he’s dreamy!”

“He’s definitely dreamy, he’s one of the Chrises you like so much.”

“Shit dude, you met Chris Pine?!”

“Nope, Evans”, she sighed, as she entered her hot bath.

“Ouch, girl. R.I.P. your ovaries, I imagine?”

“Well, R.I.P. my book that’s for sure. His dog drooled all over the pages and he put dirty paw-imprints all over it.”

“You got attacked by his dog? No way!!”

“Kassandra”, she laughed. “It’s okay, he’s nice. Maybe I’ll see him again, who knows? He’s doing a piece in the theater I like so much.”

The end of the evening was spent talking with her friend about her life, about her job, about New York and the magic that was there. They spoke a little about Lucy and how her little girl Lily seemed to grow so fast. Kassandra was dating this guy that she had met a couple of months prior so they spoke about him and concluded that he wasn’t the man of her life but he was still nice enough for now. When Elizabeth hung up, it was well past 10pm and she was exhausted. She managed to dine on the leftovers from her fridge and went straight to bed, feeling like she had had the busiest day of the month when really, she didn’t do that much.

Days came and went by like leaves falling and growing back on trees. It seemed so slow and at the same time so quick, like a continuous circle that she wouldn’t be able to break, no matter how hard she’d try. There were things out of control and Elizabeth learned not to poke into those things. She could have an impact on some others but days: not so much. She would wake up at 7am, take a quick breakfast, pester about her broken coffee machine and sigh about how she couldn’t afford a new one. She’d take a shower, apply the smallest bit of eyeliner and mascara, sometimes lipstick if she really was ahead of her usual schedule. She’d dress in her usual skinny jeans, would slip into a woolen jumper if it was cold, in a loose shirt if the weather was okay, a sleeveless blouse if it was summer. She’d wear her usual black Converses, the ones that were starting to really be a catastrophe with holes between the fabric and the white rubber. She’d take a minute to check her purse, make sure everything was in there and would plug earphones on her phone to listen to an audiobook. She wasn’t the biggest fan of those, she preferred reading with her own imaginative voices and noises in mind, but headphones were usually a sign to not bother people and she had escaped so many unpleasant behaviors by just having them in the ears that she’d trade them in the subway for nothing in the world. So she had started to listen to audiobooks, so she could still move through the pages, even if she couldn’t physically hold them. That day, she was deep into a John Green book when she emerged from the subway. It was pouring and she arrived at work drenched, twisting and squeezing her hair into the pot plant on the counter. She managed to grab a couple of tissues to absorb as much rain as possible and ended up sneezing for the rest of the day. She was freezing, with her damp clothes and her wet hair, she looked like a homeless girl but still, she managed to convince clients to buy more and she cashed all of their baskets with a (tired) smile. Somehow, she resisted the will of staying in bed on the mornings or of going to bed without having dinner, though she reckoned it happened a couple of times. For a couple of weeks, she didn’t visit the New York City Center but longed to be there and to get an hour or maybe two for just herself. The stairs were her little haven, her little safe place and she missed it as soon as she went more than a week without sitting there to read.

On a rather sweet afternoon, she finally managed to escape the bookstore and her mind automatically went back to the stairs. Grabbing her tote bag and her coat, she rushed to the nearest subway station and came back to the surface only to grab a frozen yoghurt that she kept in hand until she was able to sit on her beloved stairs. It wasn’t that cold, that day, so she enjoyed her frozen treat in silence, humming everytime she’d pick a strawberry or some chocolate from the little carton tub. She was about to enjoy her very first raspberry when a loud bark made her jump and put her hand on her chest, as always. Raising her eyes from her yoghurt, she met the warm ones of her new friend, Dodger, who was standing behind the glass door of the theater.

 

“Hey, Dodger”, she smiled and waved.

 

His human, Chris, appeared behind the door not long after, picking up his leash from his brown bag and clipping his collar to it. When he was sure it was secure, he opened the door, only for the dog to rush to Elizabeth and get a good lick of her cheek. Amused, she started to laugh, only to try raise a hand and try to push him back from her yoghurt, knowing dairy could be a bad idea for dogs.

 

“Alright buddy, calm down, you’re embarassing yourself”, Chris commented, smiling.

“It’s okay, don’t worry, but I’d like to finish it without dropping it to the ground”, Elizabeth laughed.

“Dodger, stop, Jesus Christ”, Chris sighed. “I’m very sorry about him, he just doesn’t know how to chill, apparently.”

“He’s a good boy”, she smiled, rubbing his head when finally, Dodger stopped his rufus and sat next to her.

“Elizabeth, right?” Chris asked politely.

“Indeed, and you’re Chris”, she smiled again.

“So, what are you doing here?”

“Just eating some yoghurt, I have a book to read in my bag but I don’t mix my books and my food”, she joked.

“Very wise”, he smiled, sitting next to her on the stairs. “May I ask why you’re coming here to read when you could be at home in a comfortable couch?”

“I always come here, to be honest”, she smiled. “No, I’m not some crazy fan or paparazzi camping to get to talk to you, sorry to disappoint!”

“Ah, it’s okay. I’ll live”, he joked. “Well, do you come here every week or so?”

“It’s kinda my thing, yeah”, she nodded. “It’s a bit weird, I just love this place so much, I couldn’t see myself being anywhere else.”

“I feel like there’s a backstory to this..”

“There is.”

 

Chris understood immediately that she didn’t want to talk about it. He nodded and smiled, trying to reassure her that he got it, that it was private and hers and that he wouldn’t pry anymore. So he just sat there, with Dodger, for a couple of minutes, watching the traffic ahead of them. There were yellow taxis driving past, an old woman on the opposite sidewalk who was struggling with her groceries and a young dude with headphones on who was oblivious to everything else. As always, New York was full of business men, of lawyers, of very well dressed men who didn’t have time to stop walking, who only ever stop to grab a bite at a food kart on the street and were a bit rude to the sellers. Chris wasn’t like them. He liked New York for the peace it gave him but his heart belonged to his dear Boston, where his family was and where he could crash into his old bedroom whenever he’d feel like it. Here in New York, he knew close to nobody and it was starting to weigh him down a little. He had to fight to make Dodger enter the theater, with the promise that he was a good, well educated dog who wouldn’t pee everywhere. Truth is, he did pee a little in his dressing room and Chris had to buy a Febreze can as fast as he could so no one would suspect it. Elizabeth was staring right in front of her, enjoying the ballet of yellow taxis and busy men. She lived for this constant buzz, for the life that was seeping into these streets, for the whole concept of a city that never sleeps. She knew how much it drove some people crazy but her? She could never fall asleep without the sound of the city lulling her. It grew into her, like a tangled vine, something so attached and undetachable from her. She belonged to New York and New York let her think that it belonged to her. It was like a common decision between her and the city, to never part away from each other.

 

“So you’re playing in here soon, right?” she managed to ask, when her mouth was finally empty.

“Yeah, I am”, he smiled, scratching Dodger’s ears absentmindedly. “It’s gorgeous in here.”

“Oh I know”, she grinned.

“What did you watch here?”

“So many plays, you wouldn’t believe”, she laughed. “My all-time favorite memory of here is the time I went to see Chicago.”

“As in the musical, Chicago?”

“As in the musical, Chicago”, she confirmed.

“That is so cool..”, he muttered.

“It was my first time in here, actually. Probably why it’s my favorite”, she shrugged.

“Well, you sure seem to know a lot of the history of this place. I’d love to hear more but my ride’s here”, he sighed, pointing to the black car that just parked in front of them. “I guess I’ll scare you again some time soon?”

“I guess”, she grinned. “Have a nice day! And you too, Dodger”, she smiled, taking his face into her hands and rubbing the little space underneath his ears.

 

Dodger barked quietly, as if saying bye, and the two of them disappeared into the black van after Chris turned once again and said bye to Elizabeth.

When she went back home that evening, she had barely read thirty pages, her mind still stuck on the way Chris sat on the floor to chat with her for a couple of minutes. He seemed so far from the cliché of the superstar who wouldn’t get his clothes dirty and his bond with Dodger really warmed her heart a little, from the small glimpse of it that she had. Just as she belonged to New York, the two of them seemed to belong to each other.

 

It took a couple of tries for Elizabeth to meet Chris again. Once (or twice), she sat on the steps and read her book silently, only to come back home without having seen the actor or his fluffy ball of a dog. She had to admit she was a bit disappointed on those two occasions, having applied a bit of makeup to make for a change. See, Elizabeth couldn’t care less about eye shadow or eye liner. She’d apply nail polish when the one she has is really too chipped to be considered as nail polish anymore and she’d put mascara every morning but that’s pretty much it. The only thing she was really careful and thoughtful about when it came to her morning routine was her perfume that she’d spray on her clothes and neck, as well as her wrists that she’d rub together to make her skin absorb the perfume faster. When living in New York City and taking the subway at least twice a day, you kinda had to overdo the whole perfuming thing. On those two occasions, she pretended to have missed Dodger’s kind eyes and soft ears, his gentle barks and the way he’d be so excited to see her on the stairs, when really, she was bummed to have been able to talk with Chris. She even dreamed of him one night, imagining him throwing himself into a monologue about how theater was changing his life and how he loved this play and how Dodger was so calm when he’d be rehearsing. She would listen to him with great care, letting him finish before she’d ask some questions about the play and his character, trying to know more about him and his vision of theater and on Life, in general.

So when she finally saw him again, she felt her stomach do a little happy dance as he sat next to her, no Dodger in sight.

 

“You lost Dodger?” she inquired.

“He’s staying with a friend of mine for a couple of days, I have to go back to L.A. tomorrow to sign a contract, I’m gonna visit a friend and hop on a plane back tomorrow night.”

“You’re going back and forth all in one day?”

“There’s no way I’m spending more time in L.A. than I have to. Love the weather, love my friends there, don’t really love the atmosphere of the city.”

“Oh.. Too many paparazzis?”

“That and too many people pretending to be fans just to have a selfie to add to their celebrity selfies collections. They’re a bit fake there.”

“I see.. You’ll be glad to be back in NYC, then?”

“Ah, yeah”, he sighed. “It’s gorgeous here.”

“It really is”, she nodded, closing her book on her index finger.

“So what are you reading, today?”

“Some Jane Austen”, she showed him the cover. “A classic, but it’s a good one.”

“Never read it. Is is really good?”

“Oh my God, you have to read it, it’s really, really good!”

“Noted”, he smiled. “My ride’s here”, he sighed, noticing the black car arriving on the street. “I’ll see you when I get back, right?”

“My butt seems planted here”, she joked and then turned crimson when his right eyebrow went up at the mention of her butt. “Poor choice of words?” she inquired.

“Oh I’d talk about butts all day if I could”, he grinned. And then he, too, turned crimson. “I mean, not yours. I mean, not that I think it’s not worth talking about it’s just.. I’m digging myself a grave, right?”

“I think we’re both stuck down there, now”, she smiled. “Let’s forget about these two last minutes, okay?”

“Forget what? Psssht, no clue what you’re talking about! See you soon, Elizabeth”, he smiled, waving bye at her.

 

And sure, Elizabeth was the one to suggest forgetting ever talking about butts. But she couldn’t deny that she wouldn’t forget the fact that his looked particularly good in those light faded jeans he was wearing that day.


	3. Act II, Scene 1

After Chris came back from his one-day trip to L.A., it became some kind of tradition for them to meet on the stairs, whenever Elizabeth would be able to crash there. They talked about their jobs, about their mothers, about Dodger who came back as quickly as he had gone before the trip and wouldn’t stop jumping on Elizabeth whenever he’d see her on the stairs. Chris had even tested their bond by sharing something so riduculous that if she was in this for the scoops, it’d blow up in the press as quickly as he had said it but days after, Elizabeth had kept his words to herself and he admitted that it wasn’t true. After that, Chris would sit peacefully with her for ten minutes or so, waiting for his taxi to arrive and then he’d go home, leaving her in the stairs with her nose deep into her books. Once, he just sat there, watching her read, because every time he would try to engage the conversation, she would hum in response, obviously too engrossed in her book to properly acknowledge his words. So he just shut his mouth, watched her read while hugging Dodger and when his car arrived, he quietly said bye and let her in peace. There were days where Elizabeth would just not engage with him. She’d politely say hi, ask how he was and then go back to her book. He quickly learned that on those days, she’d be better left alone. So he’d play on his phone quietly and try to catch some sentences on her book, in the corner of his eye, trying not to look like he was preying and spying on her. And then, there were some days when, in just ten minutes, they’d have more profund conversations than they’d have with anybody else. They’d talk about New York, they’d talk about how the society was getting more and more materialistic and how they wished sometimes they had lived in ancient times. Maybe the forties, just post-World War II, to see the country rejoice and unite, instead of being more divised than ever. They talked politics, agreeing on many points of views, they talked briefly about how they were both single before quickly changing the subject because both of them weren’t feeling secure talking about it and they talked about Dodger some more. They bonded quickly, like they couldn’t stop spending time together. They were each other’s constant thing in their lives, the one thing that was there no matter what. Chris had some friends in NYC but Elizabeth was all alone, so Chris was a nice addition to a lonely life that she didn’t seem to mind though. For Chris, the mystery of why Elizabeth would always wind back to these stairs was too big to let her go that easily. Sure he found her funny and interesting and they shared so many points of view but also, there was this magnetic attraction that brought him back to her, for he didn’t understand some parts of her character and couldn’t pinpoint some reasons of her behaviour. It’s like she was a puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out: the picture didn’t even seem clear and he didn’t know how to assemble the pieces. Thankfully, during their conversations, Dodger had finally seemed to know when to shut his big mouth up, letting the two talk without his constant barks that would sometimes make Chris so exasperated he would consider buying a muzzle.

All was great, all was good, no harm was done and everybody was happy. Chris would sometimes appear with two paper cups full of coffee that they would share sitting on the stairs or a couple of donuts he would have stolen from the snack table. They’d munch on them while talking, not caring one bit about how you’re not supposed to talk with a full mouth and they’d laugh at they faces covered in powdered sugar. They’d let Dodger lick their fingers clean, giggling like a bunch of idiots. The days would pass by, the weather would get colder and colder. One day, Chris came out with a throwaway cover that he had found in a dollar store. It wasn’t much but when he saw it, he instantly thought about Elizabeth, sitting on those stairs outside, probably freezing her ass off. He gave it to her on a particularly cold day, because the day after the one he had bought it was exceptionally warmer than the rest of the week and he didn’t want to look like an idiot. She had welcomed the gift with great pleasure, as her fingers were turning dark pink and her lips were shivering.

“Why don’t you bring gloves, you silly head?” Chris has laughed.

“Because then it’s harder to turn the pages, duh”, she has answered.

New York City was freezing by the middle of November. A couple of snowflakes had already made the sky glisten a few days earlier and still, Elizabeth was sitting on the stairs outside. It was getting dark sooner and sooner, making her read by the light of her phone and Chris found it incredibly dumb to let her sit outside while he was rehearsing in the warmth of the theater. So he took it upon himself to speak with the theater’s managers to ask if it was possible to let her read in the theater’s lobby, where she wouldn’t annoy anybody but be warmer, at least.

“We know this girl, Mr. Evans. She’s sitting here even when it rains. Doesn’t come everyday but she’s still a regular. She’d like that annoying bug that keeps coming back again and again.”

“She’s not a bug, she’s just a girl who likes to read”, he frowned. “Are we really gonna let her sit outside in the cold?”

“Didn’t seem to mind the four previous years, that one”, one of the managers shrugged.

“You guys are unreal. She literally doesn’t do any harm.”

“Except when she refuses to move to let our clients enter the theater, or when the photographers come take pictures of the theater and she’s everywhere in the background, or when we do fire drills and she bothers the firemen who have to enter as quick as possible.”

“Then let her come inside the lobby where she won’t be in the background and won’t bother anyone anymore.”

Needless to say, Chris argued his way into letting Elizabeth stay inside and soon enough, when Elizabeth came back to read, he would be waiting for her behind the glass doors, opening them to invite her to come inside. Elizabeth would have refused if it hadn’t been for his proud smile. He looked like a five year old child, waiting for his mom to come back home so he could show her his drawing. Dodger was laying on the white marble of the lobby, patiently waiting for his new friend to show up and when she finally did, he happily barked, but still quietly. Chris muttered a proud “good boy” and he patted his head while Elizabeth was taking in the sight in front of her. The theater was quiet, bathed in dim golden lights. The stairs to join the sitting balconies were smaller than she remembered but still as magical, as if they led to another universe. There was the cloakroom to her left and the little ticket booth on her right. The walls were as white as the floor, the ceiling full of colors as the mosaic had been renovated. It was even prettier than she remembered it to be and she was thankful for the trip back down memory lane.

“What are we doing inside, Chris?”

“I figured it was getting too cold for you to read outside so I made a little arrangement. You can stay in my dressing room while I rehearse”, he smiled.

“Oh no, I couldn’t, I mean, I can’t possibly-”

“Elizabeth. It’s okay. You’re my guest in here, you can stay in my dressing room if I allow you to”, he promised. “C’mon Dodger, let’s show Elizabeth the way to my humble little place.”

The walk to the backstage area was a dream come true to Elizabeth. Her not-so-white-anymore tote bag was hanging from her right shoulder, with her book and a bottle of water inside, and every step she took made her feel like maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t supposed to be here. The theater was gorgeous inside and when she passed through the dark red doors, she entered an even dimmer world of hushering noises and voices, of people walking in every direction, of stage directors with microphone headphones hanging around their necks and of makeup artists waiting to welcome any actor in their little rooms. Chris showed Elizabeth the quickest way to his dressing room, making her promise she would come in here whenever she’d come to the theater to read, instead of staying outside in the cold. She timidly nodded and entered Chris’ room, followed closely by Dodger. He showed her the coffee machine (this one worked!) and the fridge where she could pretty much dig anything if she felt like it. Then he pointed to the couch and said that she was free to crash on it to read. Those were the magic words needed for Elizabeth to beam like a maniac, sigh in happiness and let herself fall onto the small sofa. Soon enough, she had found her book back from her bag and Dodger was lying on the couch, his head acting as a book rest and she’d rub his side while ingesting as many words as she could. Chris laughed a little, promised he’d be back soon and went back to work.

At some point, Elizabeth’ eyes got tired and she had to take a break from her pages. Letting Dodger’s head rest on his paws instead of her thigh, she got up and looked around the small dressing room. No matter how big of a star Chris might be, dressing rooms in NYC would always be ridiculously small. It was barely big enough to fit three standing people and the furniture, apart from the couch, the vanity table, the fridge and a small cupboard was pretty much non-existant, still it took all of the space and made it look like it was crammed into the room. On the giant mirror in front of her, Elizabeth could notice some pictures that Chris had taped with some weird looking tape. Most probably something he had asked a stage engineer to lend him, seeing how bad it looked. Still, there were pictures on here, Chris was making this space his own and it was nice to see. There were a great lot of photos of his family. His brother was easy to spot, they kinda looked similar, especially in their eyes and lips. His sisters, though, were completely different and she had to assume they were his sisters. There were a couple of pictures of kids, probably nephews and nieces. A picture of Dodger on the beach was in a corner, a bit corned but still funny to watch. She also noticed a picture of Chris with one of his actor friend, another Marvel guy she knew was his sidekick in Captain America. The picture was of them two smiling and holding each other by the shoulders. It had been taken at a private event, seeing how both were dressed casually and the background seemed to be an appartment or a house. The both of them seemed to be very happy to be spending time together and the guy had written on the picture with a Sharpie, “05.24.16, the craziest party you ever dragged me into” and had signed “Seb”. Elizabeth couldn’t remember the guy’s name but she couldn’t deny the obvious bond the two actors shared and displayed on this photograph. Smiling at the glossy paper, she remembered her own friends, Kassandra and Lucy, the afternoons they spent together, though their friendship wasn’t as strong as the one taped on the mirror.

Turning back, she noticed Dodger was awake and looking at her so she smiled at him and took her place back on the couch, grabbing her book back from the vanity table and coming back to her pages.

 

Chris was honest and true to his words. Whenever Elizabeth would come to sit on the stairs (which now happened a lot more than before), she’d be found back by Chris and brought back to his dressing room. She’d crash on the couch with Dodger, sometimes would play with him for a bit and then read her soul away. The small room had become a second home and she usually loved spending some time in it, because it’d mean Chris would come back there after his rehearsals and they’d be able to talk. There was something about their conversations that she enjoyed more than anything and it was the deep level he’d go to on certain subjects. He wouldn’t hold back whenever acting was brought up or when they’d discuss their families but it’d be more cautions when his feelings were involved, like he wasn’t sure who to trust with them and what to say about them. One day, Elizabeth was reading on the couch when the door slammed open, making her jump on her seat and Dodger woke up instantly. Chris entered the room and started pacing, walking back and forth in front of the vanity, shaking his hands next to his thighs and closing his eyes so tight, Elizabeth thought maybe he got some dust in them. And then she noticed his short breath, his shaking, the way he didn’t stop walking for one bit and understood what was going on instantly.

“Okay Chris, listen to me. Listen to my voice. You’re alright. You’re safe in here. Dodger’s here, he’s sitting on the couch. We’re all alone, you’re okay. You need to take a deep breath, I’m gonna count to seven and you’re gonna inhale, okay? Let’s go.”

And she started counting. Miraculously, Chris listened and took a long breath in, only to exhale even slower. They did the whole process a dozen of times, until his body understood the message and chilled out a little. Elizabeth took his hand, put it on the wall, then on the cold mirror, then on the blanket he had brought and that was lying on the couch, then on Dodger. The poor dog stood there like a statue, waiting for his human to calm down and licked timidly his fingertips when Chris’ hands went down on his head.

“See? You’re in your dressing room, we’re all alone in there, you can calm down. There’s only us.”

Chris opened his eyes warily. His right hand was on Dodger’s head, the left was held by Elizabeth. When he was sure Elizabeth wasn’t judging or worrying or whatever, he sighed a big sigh of relief and sat next to Dodger, putting both his arms around the dog and nuzzling his face on his neck.

“You’re okay?” Elizabeth asked lowly.

“Yeah, sorry. I really need to stop scaring you and making you jump like that..”

“It’s okay”, she smiled, sitting on the other side of Dodger. “Do you often have panic attacks like that?”

“Not really, but that was the quickest one. Thanks for snapping me out of it.”

“It’s okay. My friend Kassandra used to have those too, we learned how to handle it.”

“You’re good at it.”

“Why, thanks”, she smiled. “Wanna talk about it?”

“It’s just that the play opens in barely two weeks and I keep thinking about how I might not be ready and people might think I’m a moron who got way over his head.”

“I think you’re gonna be fantastic, personally. And it’s okay to be anxious and scared about it. It’s not something you’re used to, having instant feedbacks like that, and not having the possibility to edit your performance. But that’s what makes theater something special. People are coming to see you, they’re paying to see you perform. They have faith in you, they just want to spend some time with you.”

“But what happens if I screw this up?”

“Then you won’t die of it. And your career won’t die of it. It’s gonna be some awkward weeks but you’ll forget about it when you’ll do another awesome movie. Life is a cycle, some good parts overshadow the bad parts. The sun eventually comes back at some point, don’t worry. And you’ll always have your family and Dodger on your sides.”

 

Chris nodded, still hidden in Dodger’s fur like a five-year old, before he tried to sit straight again, only for his dog to climb on his lap and hide his nose on his side. Chris scoffed a little, his heart warmed up by his dog’s affection and care, then he ran a hand on his face, trying to put his ideas in order.

 

“Thanks for calming me down”, he muttered. “I never had someone helped me out the way you did, it was.. it was nice, for a change.”

“You’re very welcome. Do you need me to do anything else? I can go grab you a decent coffee, if you want..?”

“Would it be okay if you just stay here and hold my hand? It really did help calm me down.”

“Sure, you big guy. Come here”, she smiled, patting her thighs.

 

And just like Dodger had done so many times, Chris let his head rest on her lap while she read in silence. He let her play with his hair while she was getting thrown back to the words on the paper and the fictional world that was awaiting her. Eventually, he closed his eyes and fell asleep while she was escaping to another world.

When Elizabeth noticed it, he was already deep into his nap. He wasn’t snoring (just breathing heavily, if you gotta be honest) but he had turned a little and his right arm was now hooked behind her knee. She was a bit trapped, if she moved she’d wake him up but if she didn’t, who knew how long he’d sleep there? Dodger had the perfect solution for that, though, because he started licking Chris’ face and the actor didn’t take long to stir and wake up.

“Hey, sleepyhead”, Elizabeth smiles.

“How long have I been out?”

“I actually have no idea, I was reading and I kind of lose track of time when I read..”

“It’s 7pm”, Chris announced, after checking his phone. “Let me buy you dinner, I feel like I owe you that after today.”

“You don’t owe me anything”, she laughed. “But dinner would be nice.”

 

Packing up didn’t take too long. Chris let his stuff in the room and locked it with his key, Elizabeth only had her book to put back in her bag and that was pretty much it. As he had no idea of where to go, Elizabeth took him to a small pizzeria she knew and loved and they got two pizzas to pick up. They weren’t far from her place, they could crash at her place and be left alone for a bit. Chris always was cautious about the photographers who might follow him and for sure, if they saw him walking to Elizabeth’ place, he’d be in for a call with his publicist about how, for sure, he wasn’t going to a booty call.

Elizabeth’ place was pretty cosy, pretty dark too. The hardwood floor was dark brown and the walls were of the color of the sand. Her furniture was dark brown as well and the couch was black. It was another aesthetic than the one Chris chose for his Boston house, that’s for sure, but it sure looked warm and welcoming.

 

“Chris, welcome to my place!” Elizabeth announced as she pushed the door. “Dodger, be a good boy and don’t chew on anything, please.”

“Yeah buddy, behave please”, Chris added.

 

Dodger’s tail was wagging furiously and before Elizabeth could stop, he was jumping on the couch and crashing on it like he had ran a marathon to get here. She shook her head, amused, and indicated to Chris that he could put the pizzas on the table in the kitchen. She took her shoes off, let them in the hallway and asked Chris if he could maybe do the same “because I’m a serious lazy ass when it comes to vacuuming this place”. Chris laughed and obliged, walking around in his red dotted socks. Elizabeth kinda giggled when she saw them but Chris couldn’t care less. Now, he knew Elizabeth wasn’t trying to make him feel bad.

 

“So, do you feel any better?” she asked, as she took two bottles of beer from her fridge.

“I do, thanks again for the help.”

“It’s okay, really.”

 

They ate their pizzas while continuing another discussion on New York and movie sets. Eventually, while Elizabeth was cleaning their dished (Chris offered but she wouldn’t let him because he was her guest), Chris wandered in her living room. As Elizabeth did earlier, he found a wall full of pictures of Elizabeth with family and friends. There was this brunette with a small kid on her lap, sitting next to his new friend. And there was young Elizabeth in front of the New York City Center. And another photo of Elizabeth, a bit younger, with a woman who looked so much like her that she could only be her mother. Chris noticed another picture of young and sweet Elizabeth, probably ten to twelve at that time, held by a man who was hugging her. Too curious for his own good, Chris picked the picture from the wall, letting his fingertips wander around the white frame. Elizabeth was grinning so big, her teeth weren’t that greatly aligned, she most certainly had to suffer through a retainer and braces, but there was a certain happiness glowing in her eyes that wasn’t there anymore. Chris instantly longed to meet that happy Elizabeth, the one who smiled so big that her eyes would be all crinkly and her cheeks would go so high, the one who wouldn’t clench her lips whenever she smiled, the one who would laugh heartily and wholly. What happened to that sweet Elizabeth? Where did she go?

 

“This is my father”, Elizabeth’ voice suddenly muttered.

“How old were you on this picture?”

“It was my eleventh birthday. He took me to a show on Broadway. We went to see _Cats_.”

“You guys seemed to be ecstatic about this!”

“Oh we were..”

“What happened?”

“He was diagnosed when I was eighteen. They found some tumor on his brain. At first it was okay, they were saying it could be stopped, that he had been diagnosed early enough. And then he began to forget about some restaurants we went to, here in New York. He couldn’t remember the plot of _Les Misérables_. Started talking gibberish about his job.”

 

Elizabeth picked up the frame from Chris’ hands and put it back in place, taking great care to make it look completely aligned and perfectly balanced.

 

“And then, he began to ask me who I was. Talked to me about his daughter who was living in a dorm at NYU. That he was so proud of her and couldn’t wait for her next call. Then an hour later, he’d be so happy to find me in the living room, like I was surprising him. Only to ask me, three hours later, if I was a new neighbour.”

 

Elizabeth, by now, was looking gloomier than ever. She took a seat next to Dodger while Chris stood there, watching the picture of this dad with his little girl. The one with braids on each side of her head, with a red coat and red shoes. The dad who was holding a playbill for _Cats_ with one hand and hugging his daughter with the other arm.

 

“Eventually, one day, my mom called sobbing, talking about how he asked her who she was and where he was. They went back to the hospital and discovered that the tumor had grown too much, despite the traitment. There was nothing left to be done. I went back home for a few days, watched some recordings of musicals with him, watched him hum some songs like the dad I always knew was still there somewhere in this shell of a man that he had become. I took a train back to New York after a week with him. He cried when I left, said he’d miss me and that I should say hello to his daughter if I really was stopping in New York City. Two days later, my mom called again. She didn’t have to speak. I knew when I picked up. He went away in his sleep, peacefully and silently.”

 

Chris’ heart broke, when he saw that young woman sitting on her couch, in her dark living room, absentmindedly scratching his dog’s ears. She wasn’t even crying, she just looked dull.

 

“He took you to the New York City Center several times, right?”

“It’s the last theater he took me to”, she murmured. “It feels like a little bit of my dad came there after.. after he was gone. I feel connected to him there.”

“Gosh, Elizabeth.. I’m so sorry”, he sighed.

“It’s still a bit harsh to think about it all. I’ve made peace with it a long time ago, going to the Center is kinda therapeutic. It’s the last place we shared with my dad, when I’m there, it feels like I’m back at the time when we went to see all of these plays and musicals or ballets. It feels like an old home, in a way. I must sound completely crazy..”

“No you don’t. I promise”, he added, when she shook her head. “I actually understand a bit more why you love this place so much.”

 

Elizabeth nodded, taking her feet off the floor to bring them back to her chest. Then, without another word, she swayed on her side and put her head on Dodger’s stomach.

Suddenly, Chris realised that she had always looked bigger than she was. She was quite small but he was used to see her in heels so it balanced it all out. She was always so serious, so deep into her books and still, he had found her fascinating. It was like she only lived inside those pages, like she’d be nowhere without them and now he finally understood it all.

Elizabeth had been a young broken girl and she had patched herself as best as she could. Those books were a shelter, to forget that her dad wasn’t there anymore. Better, they were an escape to a life that felt a little bit too small for her.

Elizabeth had tried to put herself back together but the pieces weren’t quite well assembled and glued together, leaving some spaces that she couldn’t fill herself. Looking at her, that now small body rolled on the couch, hugging his dog like he was some plush toy, Chris thought that maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t too bad to try and fill the spaces, afterall.


	4. Act II, Scene 2

After that day and for the remaining of the week, Elizabeth and Chris seemed to be inseparable. She would go straight to the theater after work and he’d try his best to keep some energy to spend the evening with her. She’d read in his dressing room while he’d rehearse the play and she’d invite him to her place if they couldn’t find a calm enough restaurant. Soon enough, Chris invited her to spend some time at his place and she marvelled at the home staging of his large apartment. Sure enough, he lived in a penthouse apartment with gigantic windows taking all a wall and bathing the whole place with the brown and gold lights of New York City. He lived in the rich part of the Upper East Side, where the streets where clean and the neighborhood was mostly composed of the wealthiest families of New York. Sure, compared to the small place Elizabeth was renting in Queens, it was another world and she could sometimes feel very small in Chris’ big penthouse. She was used to small places, to small spaces, and here he was in this apartment where he had to jog between the kitchen and the living room so he wouldn’t miss too much of the movie they were watching. Once, she crashed on the couch because it was late and he wouldn’t let her go back to her place by the train or take a taxi by herself. She assured him it wasn’t that bad, she’d be fine, but Chris was too anxious to let her go so he offered his bed and he’d take the couch but she fell asleep by the end of the movie and he didn’t dare moving her. She did seem a bit tired when they’d met that day so he knew better than to wake her up. When she woke up that day, Chris was already up, making pancakes and Dodger was lying on the carpet next to the couch. She yawned, Dodger got up, quietly lied next to her and she had thrown her arm around his neck, to snuggle against him. When Chris finally was done with his cooking and he came to meet her in the living room, she was back asleep and Dodger was lying silently, letting her sleep.

“You really like her, don’t you buddy?” Chris laughed quietly, rubbing his furry friend’s head.

Dodger’s eyes went up to him and then went back to stare something straight in front of him. He looked a bit miserable, like he really needed to move but Elizabeth sleeping was keeping him there. He seemed to not want to wake her up which was seriously cute.

“You’re not that gentle with me, Dodger, I’m feeling seriously betrayed, you know that?”

Dodger couldn’t care less, though, to be honest. Chris waited for a couple of minutes before he took the plate of pancakes and waved it under Elizabeth’ nose. The brunette stirred and yawned again, rubbing her eyes like a child before she finally opened them.

“Hey there, sleepyhead”, Chris smiled.

“Hi”, she croaked out. “What time is it?”

“It’s 8am, I figured you could use some time to prepare before you had to go to work. Maybe grab something from your place?”

“What?! 8am?! Oh my Gosh, Chris, I’m so late!” she exclaimed, sitting suddenly, making poor Dodger jump from the couch before he started barking.

“Okay, let’s not panic, when do you have to be at work?”

“8 and a half!” she cried out.

“Oh shoot. Okay, I’m gonna get my keys and I’ll drive you to work. Dodger, grab my shoes please!”

“What do you mean? Your trained Dodger to get your shoes?!”

“Fuck yeah I did. Less talking, more rushing out, c’mon!”

On cue, Dodger reappeared with a pair of trainers in his mouth that he dropped at Chris’ feet while Elizabeth was zipping her boots up. Grabbing a pancake in his mouth, Chris rushed to get his coat and then he grabbed a little stack of pancakes more, one that he gave to Dodger and one that he put in Elizabeth’ mouth while she was trying to put her coat on. She mumbled a thanks through gritted teeth and Chris slid her beanie on. He grabbed a bottle of orange juice and slammed his front door shut, jamming his key in the keyhole and closing it. His car was parked in the private parking lot underneath the building and they pretty much ran to it. Dodger jumped into the backseat, Chris opened Elizabeth’ door and slammed it close after she sat on the seat. He jogged to his door, punched the start button and threw his remaining pancakes on the dashboard.

“I feel so gross, ugh”, Elizabeth moaned while he was driving out of the parking lot.

“You look okay, don’t worry. Just maybe tie your hair in a knot and it’ll be better”, he grimaced. “You look like a little sun with rays all around”, he joked.

“You’re the worst friend ever”, she moaned.

“Can you put the address on the GPS?”

“Why do you even need a driver when you have your car here?”

“Because I can’t fucking park around the theater!” he screamed. “Okay, let’s do this. Don’t worry, you’re gonna be on time.”

“Allow me to doubt that”, she added, while fishing a hair tie in her purse. “I didn’t even brush my teeth..”

“There’s mint gum in the glove compartment, grab the pack, it’s yours. Also, help yourself to some pancakes while we’re on the road.”

Obviously, the traffic was a bit dense on that morning and Chris ended up taking shortcuts after shortcuts. Elizabeth, during that time, got her breakfast, munching on the pancakes and taking big swings of orange juice. Dodger, in the backseat, couldn’t stop barking, which annoyed Chris to no end, so Elizabeth fed him some bits of pancakes to shut him up a little. At least, when he was eating, he wasn’t barking anymore. Chris slammed on the break when he arrived in front of Elizabeth’ book shop. He pushed the warning button and turned to Elizabeth.

“Okay, you have three minutes to spare, look at me..”

Elizabeth turned on her seat. Without a word, Chris arranged her hair that was sticking in every direction (there’s so much you can do with your hair when sitting in a moving car) and ran his thumbs underneath her eyes to erase the remains of her mascara from the day before.

“Okay, you’re good to go. Maybe chew on a gum a little and spray a little perfume on your sweater and you’re good as new!”

Elizabeth couldn’t really answer, because Dodger was back at barking like crazy on the backseat. So she did all she could to thank Chris for his serious fast and furious driving abilities and for getting her to work on time: she grabbed his cheeks and aggressively kissed his forehead while grabbing another pancake, opening the door and yelling “I owe you one Chris!”.

Chris had to take a few seconds (and ignore the honking noises of discontent of angry and rushed new Yorkers) to eventually get over it.

 

They found each other back on the evening, when Chris was there to pick her up. Not really sure why he was there, she still climbed into his black SUV and smiled at him, questioning his presence.

“Aren’t you supposed to be rehearsing?”

“Actually, I took the rest of the afternoon off, because we’re so close to the opening of the show and we seem to be more and more ready. They were kinda happy to be finishing earlier, to be honest”, he smiled.

“And where’s Dodger?”

“I left him with my friend Sebastian, we’re actually gonna pick him up from the set of his new movie.”

“You’re telling me you’ve chosen the day I haven’t been able to shower, look like I’ve been rolled in dust and genuinely smell like a garbage truck to make me meet another actor?”

“Exactly!” he grinned. “Oh c’mon, don’t be like that, I’m sure you’re gonna like him and he’s seen me in worst states, don’t worry.”

“I really hate you, Chris”, she moaned.

“No, you don’t. You said you owe me, remember?”

Elizabeth groaned and put her head in her hands. She was mortified but Chris explained that Sebastian needed a lift to the airport and that it was an emergency. He could have gotten a cab but since they had been so busy lately, while being in the same city, they agreed that they could spend some time together. Chris parked his car in TriBeCa and waited for a few minutes before Sebastian appeared, Dodger behind him in a leash. He smiled and climbed in the backseat with the dog and his duffle bag, saying hi to the two in the front seats.

“You must be Elizabeth?”

“Yep. And I apologize for my very weird state. Your best pal here woke me up way too late for work.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were an item now”, he joked.

“Trust me, after today, there’s no chance. He’s gonna end up in a garbage disposal”, she replied.

“Ah, ah, very funny, Elizabeth. But to answer you, Seb, we’re not. I just wasn’t comfortable with letting her get a cab or a train at 1am. So she crashed on the couch.”

“Real classy, Chris. Couldn’t you take the couch and offer your bed?”

“Trust me, I tried, but then she fell asleep and I didn’t dare to move her.”

“Can you guys stop talking about me like I wasn’t there?”

“Sorry Elizabeth. Forgive my nutcase of a friend here, I think he’s socially awkward and possibly a psychopath.”

“See, that would explain a lot”, Elizabeth commented.

“Oh, he’s completely nuts. Trust me, I’ve known him for a while and the dude’s whack.”

“Oh my God, okay, stop”, Chris exclaimed. “I know I shouldn’t have introduced you guys.”

“Oh no, please don’t, I’m interested in all the weird things you did to poor Elizabeth here.”

“I did nothing!!” he yelped.

“Did you know he trained Dodger to get his shoes?”

“Elizabeth!” Chris yelled.

“Oh that’s rich!!” Sebastian laughed.

“Ugh, I ate you guys”, Chris moaned.

“Wrong. You love us both”, Sebastian commented.

Elizabeth giggled a little and then the car went back to quietness. Chris was trying to find the best option to get Sebastian to the airport, Elizabeth was trying to keep it cool and Sebastian was observing one of his closest friends steal glances on his right.

“So Chris told me you were a big book fan?” Sebastian asked Elizabeth.

“Oh.. Yeah, you can say that.”

“That is literally so cool. I wish I had more time to read but I’m filming until next May and I’m way too exhausted to open a book. I usually crash on a bed and then start to snore.”

“That’s sad..”

“I know, right? Hopefully I’ll get a little more time after May. What book should I start with?”

“I don’t know, what are you into?”

“He likes weird stuff”, Chris interjected.

“Then maybe some mystery will be the right fit. I’ll take a look at work and I’ll tell Chris to send you some titles.”

“Or even better, you give me your phone, I give you my number and you text me the titles directly?”

“Deal”, she smiled, putting her arm between the two seats so he could grab her phone.

“Jeez, look at them being all friendly and ganging up against me. True friends already”, Chris sighed.

“Don’t worry, you’re still both of our fave”, Sebastian joked.

“Are you actually jealous?” Elizabeth laughed.

“Oh he totally is. He’s been talking about you for weeks and I got your number way faster than he did.”

“Aww, poor Chris” she cooed, ruffling his hair. “Don’t worry, you’re still my number 1.”

“Thank God, I feel way better!”

Sebastian ended up being late for his flight so they parked at the airport and got some coffee with him. They talked and joked around with him, feeding bits of muffins to Dodger and getting to know each other. Elizabeth learned that Sebastian was soon finishing to film a movie called _Everglow_ and that he was living at his co-star’s place because his own apartment had been flooded and was getting repaired now. When his back up flight finally was announced, he left them skipping joyously to go back to Los Angeles.

“Hey, by the way, the sexual tension between you two if absolutely horrendous, you guys should jump on each other soon”, he joked one last time before disappearing behind the security doors.

 

Needless to say, both Chris and Elizabeth were beet red for the drive back to their places and couldn’t utter a word. Not sure if it was because they were embarrassed or suddenly taking conscience that maybe their friendship could be a little more than that.


	5. Act II, Scene 3

Chris was a wreck. And a wreck might even be an understatement. He was sweating a lot, he was nervously twisting his fingers in every direction possible, he was stuttering and his hair was sticking up in every way it could. He couldn’t form one sentence for God’s help and he couldn’t even function correctly. That Saturday morning, he fell of his bed when he woke up and then stumbled into his disheveled clothes on the floor, faceplanting on his carpet and getting a very sore jaw in the process. He burnt himself with the water of his shower, burnt his tongue with his coffee and then froze like an idiot when he finally got outside. He forgot Dodger in his apartment when he left, had to come back to pick his poor dog up and then he almost got into an accident on the street. He pretty much crossed the street without looking both sides and almost got ran over (which would have been somewhat of an escape compared to his hig anxiety of the day). Dodger couldn’t stop barking, he was late for his appointments and he had put his shirt on backwards and inside-out. Everything was a mess. Everything was stressing him out. Everything seemed like a huge obstacle to go through and he wasn’t sure he could.

He arrived at the New York City Center late, with photographers waiting for him to arrive. The flashes blinded him for a second, though it was a daytime and it shouldn’t have. He was getting used to this, or so he thought. When he pushed the door, some staff members were waiting for him, his stylist especially, who gasped when she saw him.

“Chris, you look like you got into a cat fight!” she exclaimed.

Dodger barked at the magic word “cat” and then hell broke loose. Chris got taken in charge by his stylist who pressed him to get out of his clothes. It wasn’t like she had never seen him in his underwears, Chris only trusted her around and she had every measure of his body to leave little to the imagination. He swiftly got into the dress shirt she had prepared for him and got tangled into his fitted pants, first by having put his right leg into the left hole and then by trying to fit his left leg into the same hole than the right. Krysta couldn’t believe how much of a klutz he was being and started moaning at him about how he had to get his act together. That only made Chris stress out more and then it was pretty much a catastrophe. Dodger got into a trash can so his assistant took him to a pet salon while Chris was getting a haircut. Then he had to do some interviews and that eased him a little because interviews were a routine, where some questions kept coming back from journalist to journalist and he could repeat the same answer again and again. Some questions threw him off a little but he was trained for this and it was getting better and better. Then he had to do a last minute rehearsal, where he forgot half of his lines, started to panic on stage and went back to his dressing room feeling miserable. Before he pushed the door open, he could hear Dodger howling like a maniac. But when he finally entered the room and saw Elizabeth sitting on his couch with a bunch of flowers, his brain magically evacuated the fog and the electricity. Elizabeth was here. She would save him if needed.

“Hey Chris”, she grinned.

“Hey Elizabeth”, he answered, throwing his arms around her shoulders. “How today’s been?”

“Pretty okay, thank God my boss closed the shop earlier though. She wanted to say thanks for the tickets you got her. She really enjoys the gesture and said she had to close early to get ready so basically, if I’m here, it’s because of you.”

“I’m glad I did, then”, he sighed.

“Congrats on opening day, my dear”, she murmured in his ear.

“Thanks for the flowers”, he replied on the same tone. “They’re beautiful. I wish I had been the one buying you flowers first, though.”

“Well, I’m a bit of a early bird”, she explained. “Why should the guy buy all the bouquets, anyway? Shouldn’t the guy get some flowers sometimes?”

“I’m very happy about them, Elizabeth”, he reassured her. “They’ll go well in this room, they’ll add some color.”

Elizabeth nodded, letting him set the bouquet into a plastic cup he had gotten from the theater, branded with its name and bright yellow. It looked weird and they laughed at it for a couple of seconds before they sat together on the couch, sideways so they could still look at each other. Chris looked mortified, like he’d throw up any second now, while Elizabeth looked a bit calmer though she was covering up her hands inside the sleeves of his knitted sweater, so he knew she was nervous as well.

“How are you feeling?”

“Like my whole like could end any minute now”, he grimaced. “My stomach is all kind of weird and my hands are always shaking. I forgot my lines at the last rehearsal and even though I wasn’t the only one, I’m still nervous as fuck, to be honest.”

“Hey, breathe in”, she advised him, gently taking his face into her cold hands. “You’re gonna be fine. I’m here, I’ll be here tonight, we’ll all be here after the representation, you won’t be alone in this, okay?”

“I know, I know. It’s still making me really anxious.”

“It’s okay. It’s jitters, Chris”, she smiled. “You’re more excited than scared, your brain just doesn’t process the difference.”

“My brain should go fuck itself”, he declared, closing his eyes and enjoying the contact of her hands on his skin.

“Yeah, that’s why we say “Fuck my brains out”, right?”

Chris exploded into one of his boyish laughs, putting a hand on the right side of his chest. Elizabeth couldn’t stop the giggle as well and soon enough, she had eased his nerves a little. Because that was Elizabeth’ magic: she calmed him down in the worst of the storms. She was the little wind that was blowing the clouds away. Elizabeth was the faded colors coming back to life after the pouring rain, she was the smell of wet cement, she was the first tweet of a bird after a storm, she was the calm after the thunder and the first ray of sun that’d warm his skin after the cold. She was his own little fresh air. He needed her more than she needed him but he was okay with that.

“My family will come at my place tonight for a bit. They got hotel rooms so you’re welcome to crash if you want. I did buy a fair lot of champagne we might get tipsy”, he sheepishly admitted, pushing his left cheek inside the creek of her hand.

“We’ll see. I don’t want to intrude more than I already am”, she timidly said, drawing circles with her thumb on his cheekbone.

“You’re not intruding, you’ve been invited. And don’t you dare leave early, you hear me?” he mumbled. “Keep doing this, it helps so much with my anxiety”, he admitted.

“Okay, but you have to show me your eyes. I can’t read them if they’re closed.”

Chris lifted his eyelids reluctantly. He felt like a truck was driving back and forth over his ragged body and his mind was in pieces, flat on the cement and underneath the tires. Elizabeth’ brown eyes though were mesmerising so he didn’t hesitate to dive in them while she dove inside the pool of his blue eyes. They were a bit clouded that day, going more grey than blue, but still, they held the same traces of gentleness, kindness and pureness than they always had. Today, though, they had a new shade that Elizabeth was slowly getting used to. She discovered it a few days ago and she was pretty sure that if her own eyes were lighter, that new tint would reflect in them as well.

“Did I ever told you that I like you?” Chris breathed out.

“Yeah, you did. About a few days ago. Pretty sure I told you that I liked you too.”

“Cool. Wasn’t sure I dreamed it or not, thanks for the heads up.”

“You’re the dorkiest man I’ve ever met”, she giggled.

“At least I stand out and you’ll remember me!”

Chris got swipped away a few minutes later. He had to jump into his costume and take a few photos for the production’s website. Elizabeth said she’d be back later, that she had to get ready for the night and that she’d take Dodger with her to let Chris breathe a little. What he didn’t know was that she had planned to meet with Sebastian while going back to her place so that he could drop Dodger to his co-star and help her out with a last minute shopping session. They met back at his place, where he took Dodger and his stuff and ran back to the elevator with the furry pet to let him into the very capable hands of his co-star who owned a dog as well. When he came back, he made Elizabeth jump into a yellow taxi and off they went to different showrooms and shops, to get her a dress and a pair of shoes and to get him a whole outfit as well. Chris didn’t know Sebastian would be here. He thought his friend was still in Los Angeles, spending his days having auditions and meetings for future roles. He had no idea that one of his closest friends had lied to him and taken a few days off to be able to be there on opening night. Since Elizabeth had got the text from Sebastian, they had started plotting and planning the end of the afternoon to make themselves ready for the night. Sebastian offered to pay for her dress and even though she was so uncomfortable with the idea of owing him money, he had kept reassuring her that he had enough to live and buy her a freaking dress. Elizabeth agreed, at the sole condition that he’d let her buy him a drink one day and he accepted. She didn’t know he’d drag her to a Chanel showroom, though. Elizabeth tried on many dresses, got amazing advices from his stylist that he had invited to help and got out finally, and against all pronostics, with navy fitted pants and a white blazer. She got black derby shoes and Sebastian couldn’t agree more. Elizabeth wouldn’t have been comfortable in a dress tonight. At least, she was still herself in this outfit. He went out with a complete navy suit and a striped long sleeve top, with dark dress shoes and pretty soon, Sebastian threw her into the capable hands of his stylist. She got out of the showroom looking like a modern version of Grace Kelly and he looked stylish as ever. They could have been the most awesome power couple but Sebastian knew about Chris’ fondness towards Elizabeth so Elizabeth was automatically off limit. Not that he was interested anyway, Elizabeth was cute but he didn’t know much about her and the fact that he knew Chris was into her was enough to turn him down. Bros before everything else; Sebastian was a loyal friend.

The theater was packed. Sebastian was helping Elizabeth navigate the whole thing. He had their tickets tucked inside the pocket of his jacket and his hand was safely guiding her by pushing her on the small of her back. Again, they could have looked like lovers but as long as the three of them (Chris was included in their club) were aware of what was going on, nobody else mattered. Elizabeth stepped away several times, when some photographers wanted a picture of Sebastian for the Page Six or when he greeted some people he had already met before. Soon enough, though, they were sitting at the fifth row of the theater, where the view was the best (not too far to see clearly but not too close to have to look up all the time). Chris’ family was already there and Sebastian introduced them all to Elizabeth, though Lisa, his mom, already knew a lot about the brunette. Chris tended to speak about everything with his mother, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise when Lisa said that it was nice to “finally” meet her and when his brother couldn’t stop the weird innuendos that had Sebastian laughing as quietly as he could and Elizabeth turning beet red. Soon enough, the lights flickered three times to let the audience know that the play was about the begin and then they fade away, Elizabeth sitting at the end of the Evans’ row, on Sebastian’s left. The curtains opened and the play began, throwing Elizabeth into another fictional world.

Needless to say, the first act vanished away as quickly as she would’ve blinked. Chris was amazing, delivering his lines perfectly, without a wrong step. He knew what to do, how to do it, when to do it and where. He was embodying his character like he really was him and it fitted like a glove. The whole story was heartbreaking but Chris’ character brought light and hope into it. Several times, Elizabeth thought he had looked at her but the room was so dark and the lights were so bright in his face, there was no way he’d know where to look to find her. And as Lisa told her during the intermission, he looked like he had forgotten there even was an audience. He was just living the story, living his character and forgetting the rest, like he always had.

Lisa and Elizabeth bonded a little during the intermission, when they discussed about Chris and his anxiety. Lisa knew that her son had been open with his troubles since he had told her about the episode Elizabeth helped him to go through, but she had no idea how involved Elizabeth had become, especially when the younger one explained that she now knew how to recognise some of his gestures that indicated he was getting lost into his mind: like when he’d rub the inside of his left wrist or when he’d play with the hem of his sweaters. Liza knew about those too much: she learned them fast because she had to and the fact that Elizabeth picked up on them so quickly was impressive. She really did care. After she had the proof that she did, Lisa was eager to learn more about her, more than what Chris had reported her, more than what he might have known himself.

The second act had been a little bit longer, especially because of the drama Chris’ character got involved into. If she had been next to anybody else, Elizabeth might have shed a tear but Sebastian gently took her hand when she started to sniffle and rubbed circles onto the back of it, to soothe her down. She appreciated the gesture and returned him a thankful smile before they’d get blown away by the finale. When the lights lit up again, she followed the rest of the audience and stood up for a much deserve standing ovation. Sebastian was probably piercing her eardrum by yelling and clapping so loudly but the fact that Lisa was drying her tears on the other side of the tall romanian actor was making Elizabeth a bit giddy. Chris saluted, several times, throwing kisses to his mom and sisters before his blue eyes landed on Elizabeth and his friend Sebastian, making him laugh in the ever-so-typical Chris Evans’ way. He shook his head and soon enough, the cast disappeared backstage, before Elizabeth caught glance of Chris’ assistant who was gesturing for her to lead them all to Chris’ dressing room.

Chris crying into his mother’s arms was really a sight for sore eyes, especially when he hid his face in the crook of her neck and she started rubbing his back. He had been under so much pressure lately, it was a miracle he didn’t blow up earlier. Now that the opening night was over, he was free of his stress and was okay to continue for the rest of his contract, under much better circumstances, but this first night had been a nightmare, that’s for sure. When he was finally calm enough, he hugged his sisters and his brother, he hugged his dad as well and then turned to Sebastian, calling him a sneaky bastard, before he hugged him as well.

Then it was Elizabeth’ turn and Chris threw himself at her, like she was the last drop of water after a walk through the desert. His arms went around her sides, lifting her up as he squeezed her against him and he peppered her face with kisses, laughing and smiling while he was at it.

“I’m so glad you were here”, he sighed.

“You were amazing, I’m so proud of you, Chris”, she smiled.

“That’s all that matters, then. You’re all that matters.”

For the rest of the night, Chris stayed true to his words. She was all that mattered. He took her hand while getting out of the theater, leaving her with Sebastian for half an hour to sign playbills and take selfies. Then he took her hand back in his and didn’t let her go, even during the drive back to his apartment where his family was already waiting for him to come back. He ignored the flashes of the photographers waiting for him at the bottom of his building and the three rode the elevator to his floor, in silence. Sebastian knew when to shut up and that moment was all theirs. Especially when Chris looked like he couldn’t wait to be alone with her. Sebastian almost proposed to exit the elevator and take the stairs for the remaining floors but when he had gattered the courage to, they were arrived.

Chris served champagne in flute glasses and they toasted to the success of his play. Elizabeth discussed with Chris’ sisters about all the times he had made their lives miserable and was a tyrannic brother and she laughed with them when they talked about the most unbelievable antics he had found himself into. When they finally sat in the couches to spend the rest of the night talking all together, Chris insisted that Elizabeth sat next to him. When she started grimacing and massaging her calves, he took her ankles and retrieved her high heels to let them slide on the floor, without even breaking conversation. His began massaging the sole of her feet and she had to bite down a moan at how good it felt, after spending the night walking on them. Soon enough, she was yawning and everyone else was as well. Sebastian offered a ride with him, he was fine asking for a limo taxi to drop everyone at the hotel if needed and soon enough, the Evans family bid the two goodbye before they left the penthouse. New York City looked gorgeous in front of them, the lights were shining like golden stars and the buildings looked like sparkling magic wands. But tonight, in the penthouse, Chris couldn’t give a damn about the amazing view he had from his windows. All he saw was the almost asleep brunette, lying sideway on his couch, with her legs on his lap while he was rubbing her feet to soothe the tension she had been accumulating all evening. Her eyes were drowsy and she couldn’t really think about anything else than the fact that taking a taxi tonight might feel like it was the step too much.

“I’m exhausted, to be honest”, he admitted. “And way past tipsy.”

“Same”, she moaned.

“Can you stay here for the night?”

“Sure. I’m way too tired to head back home anyway”, she yawned.

“And I really want to wake up to your face tomorrow morning”, he breathed out.

Elizabeth was too sleepy to actually process what he meant. Truth is, she suspected he liked her more than he pretended and she was definitely okay with it. So all she did was raise her arms to him, like a little girl would have done, and Chris scoffed a little, leaning towards her so she could lock her arms around his neck. When she was secure between his arms, he took her to his bedroom, lifting her like she weighed nothing and let her sit onto his bed. He slid into his dressing room, fishing a large tee-shirt that he threw her and told her he’d be taking a shower so she was fine to change in his bedroom.

When he came back, she was sound asleep underneath his covers and her right arm was lying across the bed, waiting for him to slip underneath it. So that’s exactly what he did. He slipped between his mattress and her arm, sighing with content when she snuggled closer to him, hummed a little, muttered a few inapprehendible words and kissed his neck in the process.

Here, in Elizabeth’ arms, Chris knew that there would never be anxiety, stress or nerves, for he’d always feel at home.


	6. Act III: Epilogue

Dealing with Chris’ anxiety was never easy. Somedays, he would just shutdown, demand to be left alone and not even Dodger could help him snap out of his miserable state. In these days, Elizabeth would do her best to let him feel like she was there if she was needed, that she supported him through anything and that he didn’t have to feel like he was a burden or anything else he might be feeling. Elizabeth wasn’t really sure what was going on, Chris didn’t like to talk about it, so she usually would bake a lot of cookies and send Dodger with a little paper bag in his mouth for him to find Chris and deliver them. A few days later, when the crisis would be finished, he would kiss her gently and thank her for the cookies, for the cuddles, for not talking when he needed silence while his head was so damn loud. Elizabeth would always nod, wrap her arms around his waist and put her ear against his chest. Then, snuggled there, she would listen to his heart beating slower than it had during the attack and she would sigh with content. Chris was back to himself and so she was back to normal as well. She would worry so much during his attacks that it would drive her nuts sometimes. She’d start questionning herself: had she said something? had she done anything differently? She tried to learn with time that Chris’ mind was the only thing getting off rails sometimes, that it’d go into overdrive over anything and that she wasn’t especially the one doing something to him, but still, not completely secure about herself made her doubt her ways to handle anything.

Dating a movie star wasn’t easy as well. First of all, she had to commute at least once a week and by commute, she meant flying to Boston. She would never give up New York and he wasn’t ready to give up Boston as well, so they nurtured their relationship during the weekends and they would spend the week apart, unless Chris had business in New York and then, they would live together in Elizabeth’s new place. She moved out a couple of years ago, when her building started to be crowded by paparazzis and she couldn’t walk out of it without being swarmed by an army of photographers who wanted the latest gossip on Chris. The decision had been taken after the incident when she rang the doorbell to Chris’ place in Boston at three in the morning, having driven all night. She was already crying but as soon as she saw Chris’ bed head, his eyes squinting with the light and in his underwears, she couldn’t have stopped bawling, crashing on his topless chest and flooding his skin with salty tears. Chris had been so lost, still not really awake from the late (or early) wakeup call, that he had just taken her to bed, tried his best to stop her crying and when she finally had fallen asleep two hours later, he quietly typed a text to his manager saying that he wouldn’t be able to attend the meeting he had planned because Elizabeth was going through something. He had woken up a few hours later, finding Elizabeth lightly snoring, clinging to him like he was a safe blanket and he had had trouble to get out of bed, as she would always grab him tighter whenever she’d feel him escape. He had managed to slip out of her grasp by swapping his place with Dodger, quietly apologising to the poor dog who woofed as low as he could when he felt her tight embrace around him. Chris did his best to prepare a nice breakfast, even though he had close to nothing in his fridge and when she didn’t wake up, he ate it on his own. He made a brunch, instead, turning what he could of the breakfast into a lunch. And she didn’t wake up for this meal either. So he patiently waited, working in his office and trying his best to be as silent as possible. At some point, Dodger reappeared so he guessed she had rolled in the bed, letting him escape as fast as he could. When finally the sleeping beauty woke up, it was past three in the afternoon and she was wearing a dress shirt she had found on his floor. Her legs weren’t clean-shaved and her hair was sticking in every direction. Still Chris found her the loveliest she had ever been, because she was letting him see her at her worst, she was trusting him to love her anyway and with the traces of the pillows on her cheeks, she looked like she had lost twenty five years in her sleep. Dragging her feet to his desk, she silently drapped her arms around his shoulders before he turned in his chair so she could sit on his lap.

“Are you feeling alright, Love?” he timidly asked.

“I panicked when I came back home. They were everywhere, I wouldn’t have been able to enter the building on my own, so I did the only thing I could and it was to drive myself straight here. I’m sorry I barged in here last night, I should have called you.”

“I don’t want you to drive in the night when you’re that distressed, okay?” he gently asked. “Next time, call me and we’ll figure something out. If I can’t get you into a commercial flight, I’ll find you a chopper or a driver or whatever, okay?”

Elizabeth nodded. She wasn’t that comfortable letting him spend money on her but she knew how comfortably he was living and there wasn’t much secrets between them. If he could, he would have linked their accounts by now but she was still refusing it. So in secret, he’d slip a couple of ten dollars bills around her place and in her purse, letting her think she had just found some cash when really, he was trying to help live a little bit more for herself and not for her bills dued by the end of the months.

“How are we gonna do, now that they definitely know where I live?”

“I think it’s time that you and I go visit some places in New York”, he answered before getting up from his chair and going straight to the bathroom where he’d ran a bath for them both to soak in it, making Elizabeth’s worries lessen with hot water and a bath bomb.

They visited several apartments that weekend. Most of them were small but well located, closer to the core of New York when Elizabeth was used to commute by train and subway lines to go to work. Chris had insisted on visiting apartments that didn’t feel like he was trying really hard to upgrade her place and the realtor had tried to combine both their worlds so that each of them would feel comfortable enough in their new place. But the one that let the both of them gasping in shock and panting with envy, was an apartment in a building on the corner of West Central Park and the 92nd. The place was big, with two bedrooms and a master bedroom completed by two walk-in closets and a bathroom. The place was luminous, spacious and gave an incredible view on Central Park. The building came with a lobby and a guard that was hired to keep the nuisances away. There even was a gym in the building! But the bonus point was that it was barely a block over the New York Center, Elizabeth’s safe haven and the place where they met. When Chris crashed at Elizabeth’s place that night, both of them felt a bit cramped up in her studio. They kept bumping into each other and the small double bed they’d share in her apartment suddenly felt like a single compared to the king size bed they saw in the master bedroom. They didn’t fall asleep as easily as they usually would, bothered by the noise of the streets when they enjoyed the silence of the white apartment a few hours before. By the time the alarm clock said it was nine in the morning, Chris had called the realtor to put an option on the apartment. When Elizabeth woke up that morning, she tiptoed around the subject, letting him know that it was her dream place but that she couldn’t afford it. It took them a very serious conversation for her to accept that Chris would be in charge of the mortgage when she’d be in charge of groceries and some of the bills. She wasn’t the type of girl who would get offended by Chris saying “Listen, I’m wealthy, it’s ridiculous not to enjoy it together” but she still felt like maybe, she could be seen as a leech. When Chris signed the lease, he was so happy that it immediately eased her concerns. To know that Elizabeth would live comfortably here, in New York, while he’d be in Boston was enough for him. And the fact that he was technically the owner of the place made it easier on his mind to come back to New York more often than he would have when they still tried to share Elizabeth’s little studio. The decoration of the apartment had taken a while, because the new yorker woman refused to hire anybody to help. They were able to paint a few walls, thank you very much. They paid a visit to Ikea, got frustrated over furnitures they couldn’t build because a piece was missing and they bought mugs. Tons and tons of mugs, for Elizabeth to drink teas while she’d read. They build a giant bookshelf, for all of her books, they put them all lovingly on the shelves, sorting them out alphabetically by authors. They bought nice sofas and comfortable blankets and pretty bedsheets... They even got soft carpets to decorate their living room. Needless to say, when Chris left for a couple of months to film another movie, Elizabeth invited her two friends to visit and they both had a guest room, which was nice. Chris had just put a nice frame on a credenza with a picture of them both on the beach in the Hamptons, when they had been invited by one of Chris’ famous co-stars to a week of holidays in his mansion there. They were smiling and Chris was holding her from behind, his head on the left side of hers when her hands were gripping his forearm. They looked happy, they looked in love and that’s all that mattered to Kassandra and Lucy. Elizabeth didn’t dare saying who took the picture, because if they knew, they’d freak out even more. It was still a bit surreal to think that Elizabeth, lonely and burried-in-a-book-nosed Elizabeth, was dating a big movie star, who happened to be one of the sexiest man alive. She was still a nobody, a simple employee from a bookstore who loved books and sitting on the stairs of a theater, but in a way, now knowing Chris, it made sense to them that the actor had fallen in love with Elizabeth so fast. They were both old souls, really.

That life got a bit shook up when Chris announced that he would take some time to live life fully before he’d go back to a set. He wanted a bit of a break, to spend some time with Elizabeth. He was now 39 and she was 35, they both were settled into their jobs and they were pretty sure that they were in for the long ride together. Elizabeth’s favourite numbers on her phone were Chris’, her mom’s and Chris’ mom’s and sisters’, as well as Scott’s who proved to be quite the addition to her family, and Chris couldn’t stop gushing about her mom. He loved her so much, it was quite a sight to see them walk around Middletown, arms linked and discussing about whatever they were discussing that day. Elizabeth’s mom wasn’t very tall, so it was even more adorable to see that big tall man being dragged over by her tiny mom. It really was a sight for sore eyes. They were both sure of their couple. Sebastian, their now common friend, used to say that they were already a couple of old people, like those two characters from _Up_ who’d grow old together and who’d be so much in love. Sebastian loved spending time with them both and soon enough, they’d go on double dates with him and his partner. Suddenly, Elizabeth wasn’t that lonely anymore. But that didn’t make it easier on Chris, who had felt ready to start a family for quite a while now and who knew, by now, that Elizabeth would be a fantastic partner to have a family with. He wanted kids, he loved his nieces and nephews so much that he’d wanted to be called “Dad” for years now, but he never really found the right person to have kids with. Now that Elizabeth was into his life, now that they both were really sure about their future together, he wanted this to happen. However, it wouldn’t be easy for them if he was always leaving her to go film.

When Chris announced that he was taking a break for a year or so, Elizabeth assumed he’d go back to Boston but truth was he spent more time in New York than in Massachussets. She was used to goodbyes on Sunday afternoons and now she was getting used to him, walking to the kitchen before he’d say “Want to order something?”. No more wake-up calls on Monday mornings, she’d get a real kiss and a couple of licks from Dodger who never would sleep in his own bed and would rather crash between their legs. Sometimes, he’d announce that he’d go back to Boston for a day or two but as time was slowly passing by, daily calls to his mom turned into weekly ones and their weekends spent in Massachussets became only monthly visits. Chris was settling down in New York, because as much as he loved Boston, he loved Elizabeth more and Elizabeth belonged to New York and nowhere else. He wouldn’t have ripped her from the Big Apple for nothing in the world, for he knew how much she loved the city and how happy she was in it. And so Chris settled for New York. He got a subway card, even though he barely took that public transportation and he drove his car back from Boston to the private parking garage of their building. He brought back his big coats for the cold days and his light shirts for spring afternoons. He got familiar with the numbers of the streets, he hung out at the MET and got introduced to the MoMA. He’d hum songs about New York, from Billy Joel’s track to Sting’s, passing by AC/DC’s and Sinatra’s. He even loved Alicia Keys’ hommage to the city, that soon became his second home. New York City was no Boston, but it was theirs and for that, he was grateful for it. They went through January, February and March bundled up in warm coats with beanies on, then came spring with cardigans and light boots. In summer, they’d have picnics in Central Park, which felt like their backyard and in fall, they’d run into stacks of leaves on the golden streets of the city. Then came back December, with the pretty fairy lights in the streets, with the decorations in the windows of every shop, with the limited edition coffees and hot chocolates in every Starbucks in town. It was Chris’ favorite time of the year, all over again.

That Christmas was their fourth together and they wanted to just settle into their home and do nothing all day. And that’s what they would do every weekend of December: they brew some hot cocoa that Elizabeth would top with whipped cream and little marshamallows and, sometimes, nice streaks of melted Nutella. Chris would hum whenever she’d bring him a cup and she would always smile with shut tight eyes like a little monkey when he’d kiss the whipped cream off of her nose. He had bought the most comfortable and softest throw blanket ever and they’d spread it on their legs when they’d crash in bed to watch Christmas movies. Chris was a sucker for any movie that started a bit as a catastrophe: stuck in a lost city for Christmas because of the snow? Forgotten home by distracted parents? Count him in! Elizabeth, herself, was a big fan of royalty. Anything with a Christmas prince was a winner to her eyes. Whenever they’d see something nice in a movie, they’d note it on their phones, on a shared note between her phone, his, and his iPad. They wanted to try to make the best Christmas ever, this year and so Christmas movies were their inspirational sources. Sometimes, they’d cringe at a character. Sometimes, they’d laugh. Sometimes, they’d cry together, passing each other tissues and laughing at how pathetic they’d look. The Hallmark channel had been subscribed to for the month and Netflix provided a nice amount of material and so they would bingewatch Christmas movies all day, enjoying the week evenings to do their Christmas shopping.

And on some days, Chris would get out of the house to go hang out with Sebastian. He claimed he wanted to help him find the best Christmas gift for his partner when really, the two of them were trying to enter incognito into jewellery boutiques to find a nice ring. Because Chris really wanted the best Christmas ever, to make sure his proposal would be the most romantic it could. Elizabeth’s mom had given her blessing and Chris had secretly visited her dad’s grave to lay a nice bouquet of flowers on the stone where the name she would hopefully no longer wear in a few months was engraved. He had promised him that he would take care of Elizabeth. That he shouldn’t worry. That he’d always be there and that he’d always do his best. Her mom, who was there as well, told him that they would have loved each other. That Chris reminded her of her late husband in many ways, sometimes. And then she had sent him some pictures that Elizabeth had saved a long time ago, when she had wanted to plan a wedding that she thought she’d never have. Sebastian was there for moral support, really, and to make sure that nobody would peep a word out that Chris was trying to find an engagement ring. Three weeks before Christmas, he gave up on finding the perfect ring, so he made an appointment with a jeweller that his assistant found for him. He came and told him everything about Elizabeth. How she was a simple woman who loved old things and books and mugs full of tea or hot cocoa and how much he loved her. Together, they designed the ring Chris wished he had found and when they were certain the design was final, the jeweller started his work. The ring would be made of gold, with an oval dark sapphire in the center, crowned by tiny diamonds that casted light in every direction, just like his love felt like to him. The ring wasn’t gigantic, Chris didn’t want to show off and he felt like neither did she. So when he came back with Sebastian three weeks later, on the morning of Christmas’ Eve, to pick up the ring, he was emotional like he never had been. His eyes started to tear up and he got all choked up like a fool. Sebastian made fun of him, of course, but truth was he couldn’t exactly do so because he never had to propose. Chris couldn’t wait to pop the question out. He couldn’t wait to tell Elizabeth that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He couldn’t wait to do it in front of their families. Both of their moms knew with his dad but that was it. Chris didn’t want to tell too many people in case someone would rat him out. Especially Scott, now that he thought of it. Scott was the worst in keeping secrets. If he knew, Elizabeth would have known in minutes, literally. So Chris had kept his mouth shut, for the sake of the surprise. He took back the ring in the nice navy velvet box and left Sebastian do some last minute shopping for his own Christmas. When he came back to the appartment he shared with Elizabeth, he thought he’d never be able to wait but he kissed her hello and went straight to work, to avoid ruining everything.

The whole day was spent preparing for the evening. They were receiving the whole Evans family, as well as Elizabeth’s mom. There were close to fifteen guests, themselves included and it meant a whole lot of cooking. Chris was on turkey duty and Elizabeth was baking cakes like a chef so that when Lisa and Judith finally arrived, they were impressed with the preparation the two had already been through. The turkeys were ready, the cakes were still in the oven and Chris was mashing potatoes like he had done that his whole life. Lisa went to the sauce station while Judith took care of the vegetables and soon enough, the whole family was reunited after Stella, Chris’ niece, bursted through the kitchen door saying that she was hungry and that she hoped Santa hadn’t forgot that she was spending Christmas here and not in Boston. When Elizabeth kneeled down and promised that she had sent him another letter to remind him of the change of address for tonight, Chris knew that he had made the right decision. There wasn’t any other woman he would have chosen to spend the rest of his life with.

Because he was a little prick but still polite, Scott helped Elizabeth to serve everyone. He made sure Stella’s plate wasn’t too full and that Elizabeth’s was full enough. When he added that “she needed to eat, for Christ’s sake”, Elizabeth’s mom grimaced a little. There was no way her daughter was too thin. She was just the right size, which Chris didn’t waste a second to remind his brother, wrapping an arm around her waist and squeezing his nose against her ribs. For a second, Scott was the one grimacing. But then, Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at him and he went away to the kitchen to get the saucer she had forgot without any word.

Midnight had struck a couple of minutes before. The kids were already fast asleep on the beds of the guestrooms and Dodger was guarding Stella, snoring next to her on the bed she had chosen for the night. She would be carried away by her dad when the adults would say that they were too tired to function and they’d all crash at a nice hotel down the street. Chris had booked the rooms a few weeks before, making sure they would be booked in this busy time in the Big Apple. The adults had crashed on the couches and loveseats of the living room, enjoying some last few drinks and exchanging some gifts before they’d have to let every gift into Chris’ and Elizabeth’s walk-in closets. And so, during that chitchat of theirs, Chris announced that he wanted to make a toast and stood up, taking his drink and starting his speech, before he sneakily gave his glass to his mom who was in the scheme. Scott could sense that something was up when his big brother started mentioning how grateful and lucky he felt to live next to the woman he loved most in this world and his gasp had probably been the loudest one of them all when Chris got down on one knee and popped the velvet box open to his girlfriend, asking if maybe, just maybe, she wanted to marry him. Elizabeth didn’t cry. She didn’t make a sound, now that he thought of it. Her eyes got watery and she shook a little, but she crashed on the ground in front of him and gave him her hand so he could slip the gold band on her ring finger and then she framed his cheeks, enjoying the nice scratch of his beard between her fingers, to kiss him slowly and assure him that she, indeed, would marry him. And like that, Chris was engaged to the love of his life, in a calm and a silence that she brought him in the most crowded and noisy days that his life could present to him. His whole family got up to congratulate them and to sneek a peak at Elizabeth’s new jewellery item, Judith trying to dry her tears when Chris engulfed her in one of his bear hugs that he was a pro of, thanking her again for all of her help in the planning of the proposal and the designing of the ring. Scott was tearing up for them but then, he started shaking his hands to Elizabeth and she rolled her eyes to him, asking for a second before she disappeared in the hall to the bedrooms. Chris furrowed his brows, unable to decipher what was going on, before she came back to them, her hands clasped together around a present and a weird expression on her face.

And without a word, because apparently, they didn’t need any, she slipped the little box into Chris’ hand, just like he had slipped the engagement ring on hers a few minutes before.

“I was planning on giving it to you tomorrow evening but since you just did that, I guess the timing couldn’t be more perfect”, she timidly smiled.

 

When Chris got down on his knees, for the second time of the night, it wasn’t to propose again. He had just done it and she had already said yes. Or at least she had nodded.

This time, he said the first words that started the rest of his life.

He said “Hi, this is your dad” before wrapping his arms around her bum, squeezing his face against her belly and weeping like the baby he was about to welcome in this world.


End file.
